


All Safe and All Rescued

by Miss_M



Category: Drive (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, Family, Minor Character Death, Multi, Sexual Content, Threesome - F/M/M, Violence, no tagged characters die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:08:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28901646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: If there’s one thing Standard learned growing up and got a real refresher course on in Chino, it’s this: you never know what the other son of a bitch is going to do next.
Relationships: Driver/Irene Gabriel/Standard Gabriel
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	All Safe and All Rescued

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rubynye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/gifts).



> This is an extra treat. I own nothing.

If there’s one thing Standard learned growing up and got a real refresher course on in Chino, it’s this: you never know what the other son of a bitch is going to do next.

They did it. They’re nearly out of there. Pawnshop owner’s had guns pointed at him before, must have done, but he’s shaking like a leaf. And he’s still stacking straps into the bag, way more than forty grand. The sight of all that money makes the hairs stand up on the back of Standard’s neck, makes his palm sweat around the grip of his gun. Maybe that’s what distracts him, or maybe it’s the knot in his stomach, or maybe it’s the fucking ozone layer, who knows. 

When the redhead, Blanche, pulls a little pearl-handled gun from the pocket on her hoodie and puts one in the pawnshop guy’s head, Standard startles, nearly squeezes off a round himself, like she just painted the wall above the safe with _his_ brains.

“What the fuck?”

“He could ID us,” she says, cool as you please. 

She shoves her little toy gun back in her hoodie and picks up the bag. It nearly overbalances her, all those bundles of money. And she goes, out the glass door and into the parking lot. Standard still has his gun pointed at where the guy was standing three seconds ago, and he’s sweating right through his shirt. Standard’s done a lot of dirt, but he’s never been an accessory to murder before. 

“Shit.” He shoves his gun in the back of his pants and follows Blanche. “Shit. Shit.”

She’s in the passenger seat, she’s even got her seatbelt on. Standard catches her eyes slewing left. Then he sees his new friend look left too, his hands in the leather racing gloves tight on the steering wheel.

Standard’s nearly at the car. No time to waste, but he steals a sideways look: a Chrysler with tinted windows, three spots down in the empty parking lot. 

He grabs the door handle, hot from the sun. He’s in the back seat, crowded up like a little kid against the big black bag of money. 

They peel out of the strip mall parking lot like they’re on fire, and the Chrysler follows, tires screeching. Standard’s thrown across the bag, his arms around it, the gun shifting in his waistband. Blanche screams, but not like she’s really scared. More like she’s on a roller coaster. 

They weave in and out of the early afternoon traffic, then the road clears and starts to climb. Dust and scrub on one side, hillside falling away on the other. The road is serpentines strung together, and they’re in a contest of pure speed. The engine is roaring, and Standard glances out the dust-caked back window. Chrysler’s about to ram them. 

“Standard.” Another cool motherfucker, ain’t Standard lucky. Their eyes meet in the rearview mirror. “Get the door,” the driver tells him.

Standard opens his mouth like a fool, and the gloved hands twist the wheel sharply left. They do a one-eighty, God’s own luck they don’t blow a tire. The driver pulls the emergency brake, then his hand keeps moving, quick as a flash toward Blanche.

Snick! He pops Blanche’s seatbelt buckle.

Standard was thrown against the door by the maneuver, and as they start to pick up speed again, heading past the Chrysler trying to turn around after them, he lunges forward, his face mashed to the back of Blanche’s headrest, snakes his hand between her seat and the door, and pulls the handle. Blanche scratches at his hand, then she reaches for her pocket. Amateur. 

Her body slams against Standard’s hand, nearly breaks his wrist, when the driver pushes her out. 

They’re doing sixty at least and gaining speed. She hits the road like a sack, right in the path of the Chrysler, which swerves to dodge her. The hot wind from the open door whipping his face, throwing dirt in his eyes, Standard looks out the back window again. He sees the Chrysler’s front wheel slip over the edge of the narrow shoulder, then the rest of the gleaming car falls and is gone. Blanche, unmoving, is lost behind a twist in the road. 

Standard turns back around, moves so he’s sitting on the bag of money, to get out of the dust-laden wind. No way to shut the door without stopping. He searches for blue eyes in the rearview mirror, but the man’s focused on his job again, eyes on the road, hands sure on the wheel.

“They fucked us,” Standard says. 

No response. Of course. 

The bundles of cash shift under him, like he’s sitting on a pile of corncobs. Or sand. Standard grabs the driver’s backrest for balance as they swerve back downhill to the highway. 

“Ray,” he says. Still feels weird to say his name, like they’re friends or something. “We got another problem. About the money.”

Irene slaps him when he comes in, dust in his beard, and tells her to pack an overnight bag, leave everything else behind. When he tells her what he did, what he didn’t tell her about before.

“You son of a bitch.” 

She almost never swears. He’d have given anything not to disappoint her again. 

“Renie, I’m sorry. I’ll make this up to you.”

She throws up her hands. Her voice shakes as she tries to keep it down, so Benicio won’t hear. “Don’t. Just… Make sure Benicio packs his school bag and brings Mr. Blue.”

She goes in the bedroom, and Standard sits next to his son, who’s watching a cartoon with the blue stuffed rabbit tucked up beside him. Benicio keeps saying he doesn’t like Mr. Blue anymore, but he always brings the toy along to bed. Now he sits closer to his father, not exactly snuggling, but he lets Standard put his arm around him. Standard feels a million years old while he listens to Irene slam drawers. In under ten minutes she’s ready: one zip-up bag, her purse, and three jackets thrown over her arm. She won’t look Standard in the eye. 

They leave the key under the welcome mat, go down the fire escape. Won’t be the first to skip out from a place like this before rent day. 

Standard lays his hand on Irene’s stomach when they’re at the mouth of the alley, feels her tense up under his touch. Her hands go to Benicio’s shoulders, holding him back, and for a moment they must look perfect, holding on to each other.

Standard separates from them, pokes his head into the street. Cars passing by, rush hour starting. The sunlight that afternoon yellow, like an old photo. Fifty yards down the street, on the corner, leaning against the car so he can see the whole intersection, Ray’s got his back to the building. Looking casual, like a pimp waiting for business to roll up.

All the way up in the elevator, and in the apartment, and climbing down the fire escape with Benicio in his arms, Standard kept thinking how Ray told him to go get his family, like Standard might have done anything else. Ray, who never spoke unless he had to. He too must have known that, if Standard had sent Ray up there, Irene might have taken Benicio and left Standard waiting on that corner till kingdom come. 

Standard could do it now. He could say come on, it’s not safe, grab Irene by the arm and drag her after him, away from the boulevard and the man waiting by the parked car. His old man would’ve done it that way. 

Standard whistles. The sound is an arrow, it slices through the traffic noise, the thump-thump of a police chopper somewhere south and east, over where Standard grew up. 

The blond head turns. The sun’s in Ray’s eyes, he might not even see them. 

Dip of the chin: clear. 

Standard gestures to his family. “Let’s go.”

They only go a couple of miles, to a garage on Silver Lake Boulevard. Old guy with a limp knows Ray, knows Irene and Benicio too. Standard’s getting a little tired of being the last one in, doesn’t miss the look the old guy, Shannon, flicks from him to his wife and son to Ray. But Standard didn’t want to drag any of his old friends, the ones who are still in the game, into this, so following Ray’s lead it is.

Shannon gives Benicio a candy bar from the vending machine, offers the rest of them coffee. Irene drinks it to be polite, but Standard can tell she hates it. She still won’t look at him. 

In the office overlooking the garage, Ray and Shannon act out a silent movie. Shannon waves his arms around, gestures out to the three of them sitting beside a vintage Cadillac up on a lift. Ray looks rattled, and damn if that doesn’t give Standard a bad feeling.

“Alright,” Shannon says when they come out. He smiles at Benicio. “Can you stay out here with your mom while we take care of something in the office?”

“I want to know,” Irene speaks up. Her face soft yet implacable as the men stare at her. “How much there is.”

“I want to know too,” Benicio pipes up, no clue what the adults are talking about but not wanting to be left out, and Shannon’s face creases up. 

“Why don’t I show you how to change the sparkplugs on a T-Bird, huh?” He leads Benicio off, hand between the boy’s shoulders.

They haul the bag into the office and count the straps. A million plus. Just seeing all that money in one place makes Standard feel funny. He wants to throw handfuls of bills off the roof, he wants to buy every car in the place, he wants to strip naked and fuck the bundles of cash, he wants to put a match to it just to see how quickly it would turn to ash. 

Irene hugs herself, staring at the pile of money at her feet shod in Walmart sneakers, the whites of her eyes shining bright. Ray’s hands are in the pockets of his ridiculous jacket. He nudges the money with his boot. 

Standard licks his lips. “If we just left, now, tonight…”

“A million won’t get you far enough,” Ray interrupts quietly. Standard would like to punch him. He settles for punching the desktop covered in invoices.

“Whose is it?” Irene whispers, like her throat hurts. 

Standard sits down in the swivel chair, so he has an excuse to not keep still. “Someone bigger than Cook, that’s for sure. Fucker used us, used me.”

Irene barks a laugh. “Oh well, that’s the important thing.”

Ray, softly, before Standard can respond: “Whoever it is, they’ll want it back.”

Silence ticks by while they stare at each other, one look shared between the three of them. 

“Will they take it back, um, clean?” Irene asks. She looks from Ray to Standard, her hands shaking. 

“Yes.”

Standard’s eyebrows shoot up at Ray’s assured tone, but then he gets it. No use panicking her even more. 

“We’ll figure it out,” Standard tells her, and she looks at him steady for the first time in what feels like a long time, the anger still etched into her face, making her look older. 

Shannon sends them to a place off Wilshire, hands Ray car keys and a phone. Routine. Standard is starting to think that even with his rap sheet, he’s not the biggest gangster around by a long shot. 

It’s dark by the time they settle in, get Benicio to eat something and go to sleep in one of the bedrooms. He can tell something’s up, but the day’s momentum tires him out. He sleeps in the middle of the double bed, still in his shorts and tee, clutching Mr. Blue.

Irene and Standard lie alongside him, fully dressed, one on each side, like their son is a sword between them. Staring at the ceiling, the lights of passing cars, the hum of the boulevard thrumming down Standard’s veins. He can hear Ray out in the common area, talking on the phone.

“What is he to us, Irene? And don’t say he’s just a friend.”

He’s wanted to start in on this and hated the thought of it since the night of his welcome home party. Things are shifting around, spaces opening up. Shit goes south when people on a crew turn on each other.

Irene is silent for a really long time. Standard feels like he might throw up when finally she says, softly so as not to wake Benicio: “Not just a friend. But not what you think.” 

“What do I think? Huh? What do I think?” He’s louder than he should be, but Benicio doesn’t stir, breathing steadily through his mouth. 

Irene is silent again. The hum of traffic, the click of a phone being shut. Standard senses Irene’s movement before he sees it in the dark room, turns his head to see her reaching for him over Benicio’s head. The back of her hand on his cheek, knuckles dragging gently, rustling his beard, her wedding ring catching on his lip. 

“Benicio really loves him, you know. He wouldn’t love a bad man,” Irene says. 

Standard knows what it must cost her, to be kind when she’s still so angry. He absorbs her words, closes his eyes before them. _And you?_ he keeps inside, a knife tearing at his throat. 

The doorknob turns and Ray is outlined against the light from the kitchen. White jacket, blond hair, an angel, maybe of death. He motions for Standard to follow, looks at Irene a moment. Something passing between them. Standard has seen it before, but now he’s grateful that they don’t need to speak. 

They drive to a strip joint on La Cienega, and there, Standard gets confirmation of what he’s already suspecting, which is that Ray is stone cold and not just in the sense that he’s got the steadiest nerves Standard’s ever witnessed in a human being.

Standard hustles the girls out of the dressing room, stands guard at the door. One eye on the room, one eye on the hallway. So he doesn’t have to look closely, but he can hear the violence, the creak of the hand in the leather glove squeezing the hammer, the rage like ice in Ray’s voice. 

The thing is, even with the rep he could enjoy from his time in Chino, Standard was never the hard man. He was never the guy who planned or led. He did the robbing, sure, some ‘banging, like most guys he grew up with, but he went down for receiving stolen goods. He wasn’t the guy who shot store owners in the head or beat thugs to death for threatening people outside of the game. 

Ray nudges him – Standard’s blocking the door. He clocks the motionless lump on the floor, Cook’s phone and the bloody hammer in Ray’s hands, the white satin jacket flecked red. 

Ray opens the phone once they’re well away from the club, and Standard covers both on instinct, the cold plastic and the warm hand – shouldn’t be so warm after Ray washed it with cold tap water, after what he did – and expects violence in response. Gets only a level look, those baby blues back to normal, the ice receded. 

“You look fairly smart,” Standard says, can’t help goading him a little. “So act smart. Don’t call this Nino, not tonight, with your blood up. Nobody knows where we are. Tomorrow we’ll figure it out.”

He convinces himself better than he did back at Shannon’s garage, and it seems to rub off. Ray nods, pulls his hand free, slips the phone into his pocket. 

The sky is hazy pink, sunrise and smog, by the time they park and get out on Wilshire, the boulevard already roaring. Ray heads inside at a steady lope, like nothing particular happened, but Standard’s done with letting things stretch out. They’re in this together, it seems, so he might as well deal with it. 

He grabs Ray’s arm, under dusty palm trees and sleeping windows. 

“Look, man. You and Irene, way I was raised, I should make like my old man, you know? Get loud, get mad, bust my knuckles on your face. Or we could do this another way.”

“I’d prefer that.” Easy, calm, no bullshit.

Standard grins. “Hey, me too. I’ve seen how you can get when you’re riled up. Hate to be on the other end of that.”

“You plan on hurting your wife? Or your son?”

Standard’s smile drops. “What the hell kind of question is that? I should be asking you that, you know.”

They stare at each other, hard concrete all around them, and Standard figures he could survive this. He’s shorter, but he’s got some muscle and a few tricks he learned inside.

Ray nods, like he did while keeping watch hours before: a barely-there dip of his chin. “Then we have nothing to worry about.” 

Over diner eggs and pancakes, Shannon agrees with Standard on the wisdom of not calling Nino and stirring the shit even more. Standard permits himself one smug look at Ray, who pretends not to notice. Standard is equal parts amused and annoyed that he can already read him so well, impassive as he is. 

Irene takes Standard’s hand under the table, and Standard breathes deeply, holding it in, memorizing the feel of the creases on her palm, her slim fingers, just in case.

“You’ll have to move again,” Shannon says. “I know Nino, he’s a hothead, if I funnel some false leads his way he’ll be chasing his tail all over Southern California for the next twelvemonth. Just so long as you all stay out of sight.”

He waggles his eyebrows at Benicio, like the boy’s the ringleader. Benicio watches the friendly stranger unblinking and shovels pancakes into his mouth, struggling with the big fork. Ray reaches over and cuts the pancakes into chunks for him.

“It’ll have to be something more permanent,” Irene says. “Benicio goes back to school soon, and Standard needs a permanent address to give to his parole officer.”

Shannon stares at her, holding his knife and fork like he’s forgotten how to use them. “Ma’am, I know that you know what a tall order that is. After you all decided to stick together for reasons which continue to escape me.”

“I know. And I’m grateful for your help. We all are. But this is what needs to happen.”

Standard missed it, of course, but he’s certain this is what Irene did when he got sent to Chino: gathered herself to a single point, sunlight through a magnifying glass, to get done what needed doing. Unblinking like her son, she stares Shannon down across the Formica. Casting around for a lifeline, the old man looks to Standard, who shrugs, still holding his wife’s hand, then to Ray.

“Don’t look at me,” Ray says, hiding his smile behind his coffee mug.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Shannon mutters. He glances at Benicio. “Sorry, kid. Irish mouth.”

None of them are stupid enough to dip into the cash, which goes to the back of a closet, the zipped-up bag as inviolable as a sarcophagus. They wind up in a walkup on the edge of Santa Monica, above a takeout place between two auto shops. The metro runs down the next street over, and the signs are mostly in Spanish, the fancy stores and the beach miles further west. A regular place in between one polished jewel and another, more of a village than the kind of place where neighbors pass each other without remark. No one gives Standard a second glance, especially when he cranks up the accent he’s mostly shed over the years, but Irene and Ray attract some sidelong looks. A wife, okay, different strokes and all, but the guy going up to the same apartment?

One day soon after they move in, their landlord asks to speak to Standard. He doesn’t try to shake them down, doesn’t make hints about a friend at the local police station or, more likely, the local gang. He’s just nervous. Standard knows how to handle nervous before it turns violent. 

“He was asking about you,” Standard says when he rejoins the other two in the kitchen. “White people are scary, you know.”

Irene laughs. “I’m scary?”

Standard winks at her. “Nah, you’re with me. This one,” he jerks his chin in Ray’s direction. “This one puts people’s backs up.”

Ray doesn’t say anything, smiles a little. Baby blues, baby face. Standard can admit – if only to himself – that he gets what Irene saw in him, though they’re still marking out territory, maneuvering around each other, the three of them plus Benicio in a two-bedroom apartment. 

“Told him you’re Irene’s cousin and you’ll teach his kid to drive. Little punk’s already smashed the fender once, ran a stop sign. The old man’s busy, can’t afford to hire someone.” If the kid knows what’s good for him, he won’t test Ray’s equanimity too much.

“I’m a driving instructor.” Ray shakes his head, but he’s still smiling. 

“Well,” Irene says. “You need to know defensive driving in this city. Just don’t teach him how to rob anything.”

Standard laughs, claps his hands. “Told you she’s funny.” 

Standard starts working in the carwash down the street, Irene gets work in another diner out in Van Nuys – hell of a commute, but it pays not to be seen around their old neighborhood – and Ray teaches more people to drive, people who laugh at his Spanish and even pay him. Shannon checks in on them once a week or so: Nino’s going nuts but the trail’s gone cold. Give it six months, they could start venturing further out. 

One day, about a month in, Standard catches Irene as she’s folding laundry in their bedroom, using Benicio’s cot as a folding table while he’s in school, Mr. Blue relegated to the floor. She laughs when he pulls her into his arms, her hands full of pillowcases, and kisses her. She starts to put her arms around him, but he holds her at arm’s length. 

“You got a shift later?” She nods, leans in for another kiss. Standard leans farther back. “He doesn’t have anyone today, he just had a cancellation. I’m going to pick up Benicio after school and take him to the beach. Be back for dinner.”

Irene’s face tries to rearrange itself but doesn’t seem to know which way to go. “Standard…”

“It’s okay.” 

He moves away from her, feeling like a fool for putting distance between them, gathers up his wallet, his keys, rolls up a couple of towels. Like he doesn’t get that her hesitation isn’t only or really about Standard being around a lot of people where someone might recognize him. Like he doesn’t have a hot leaden ball in his stomach, knowing what he does about what Ray’s capable of. Yeah, that’s it – he’s worried about Irene’s safety. 

He looks back at his wife, tries a little swagger. “It’s all going to be fine. You’ll see.”

Irene is crushing the pillowcase between her hands. She hates it when clean laundry gets wrinkled. Standard covers her hands with his, gives her another kiss. Just lips and breath: an affirmation, not a claim. 

He goes before his nerve fails him. He walks around, greets their neighbors. Scoops up Benicio in front of school and heads for the metro station. They come back after dark, starving and sunburned and crusted with salt, Standard feeling half blind from the sun’s glare on the water. 

Standard runs Benicio and himself a bath. They sit down to eat, all four of them, before Irene’s graveyard shift. Standard keeps his eyes on his plate, listens to Benicio regale Irene with tales from the beach, exchanges a few words with Ray. Tries not to notice, then not to care, how the two of them move. Loose and careless, shoulders down. Expansive. Well-fucked. Their eyes slewing away from each other in a different way from before, when they either couldn’t stand to look at each other or to look away.

“Gimme a toothpick, man,” he says to Ray. 

Benicio asks for one too, and the three of them sit at the table like civilized cavemen, picking mastodon flesh from their teeth and ignoring the dirty dishes. Irene’s goodbye kiss to Standard feels the same as it always has. She kisses the top of Benicio’s head and reminds him about homework, then she does something new: gives Ray a peck on the cheek, just by his mouth, before she heads out. Her eyes on Standard, her smile a thing shared all around the room. She’s still the most beautiful girl Standard has ever seen, and he returns her smile without having to think about making an effort. 

Standard’s new parole officer is a beefy white guy with _Semper Fi_ tattooed on his forearm. It looks like he did it himself with a safety pin. He doesn’t look Standard in the eye while he works through the questionnaire, checking that nothing about Standard’s situation has changed since his last check-in. The A/C is down, the ceiling fan whipping overhead no match for the Santa Anas. 

“You still at the same address?” Slurp from a vending machine cup. Standard would rather be dead than drink hot coffee in this weather.

“Yessir.”

“Over on the Westside, with your people?”

 _I’m not Mexican, you prick._ “Yessir.”

Guy blinks at his computer screen, not even a nod, and frowns. “Says here you got four people living in the domicile. Did you have another kid?”

It was Irene’s idea to report Ray living with them rather than have it found out. Get out in front of any questions. Just as it was Irene’s idea to tell Standard he should try kissing Ray sometime, see how smooth his skin is because he shaves every day, a small barb wrapped up in a kindness. She kissed Standard herself then, before he could act stupid and bluster about bullshit that didn’t really bother him anymore, about prison and getting out to find that his wife, who’d only ever been with him, had found someone else she liked. If Standard’s learned anything else besides never assuming he has all the angles figured out, it’s to let himself be guided by a good woman once he got lucky enough to find one. 

“My wife’s cousin is living with us.” Smooth as oil. He’s introduced Ray as Irene’s cousin often enough.

The parole officer looks Standard in the eye for the first time, grins. He’s missing a molar. 

“This cousin, she have big tits?” Guys being guys, even if one of them’s Mexican. 

It takes less than a second for Standard to think back to earlier that day: Irene kissing him good morning when he came into the kitchen, her mouth bitter because _she_ drank coffee in every kind of weather, her skin smelling like sweat and laundry softener. Scratching at Standard’s scalp when he knelt on the linoleum and pulled down her panties and lifted her thigh onto his shoulder. And a half hour before that, waking up pressed up to Ray’s sweat-sheened back, hearing Irene hustle Benicio off to school. Rutting lazily against the backs of Ray’s thighs, rubbing his dick between Ray’s skinny ass cheeks, sweat and precome smoothing his way. Even with Benicio out of the house, Ray making no noise, as taciturn when he fucks as when people talk to him, only his breath hitching when he came in his own fist and brought his thighs together tightly to get Standard off.

Standard matches his parole officer leer for leer, doesn’t overplay it. Let the guy who can fuck up his life with a keystroke set terms. “Like two melons.”

The prick grunts a laugh, points a finger gun at Standard. Standard wonders if anyone ever told him not to do that shit around people who’ve been around real guns. 

“You dirty fuckers.”

Standard keeps his smile steady and neutral. Steady as she goes. 

“We shoulda talked her out of it,” Standard says for the second or third time. He’s even annoying himself, but he can’t help it. 

He keeps pacing around their apartment until the contrast between his restlessness and Ray sitting motionless on the couch, only the muscle in his jaw getting tighter and tighter, forces him to stop and sit down next to Ray. Now his thigh’s jumping, his heel’s drumming on the floor. At least Benicio’s at a sleepover.

Shannon blew in last night like a tornado: Nino’s money wasn’t Nino’s money after all. Nino stole it off of the East Coast mob, who finally got tired of Nino’s stalling, came out west, and strung Nino and his partner Bernie up by the balls. Now they’re threatening to make Shannon’s broken pelvis look like a cakewalk if the money isn’t returned. Shannon was ready to skip town, but he didn’t want to leave them in the lurch. Standard’s met a lot of desperate people in his life – he’s rarely seen desperation at real struggle with decency. 

“If you arrange a meet, I’ll go. They won’t see me as a threat,” Irene said. “If anyone else goes, they’ll have something on you. It’ll get messy.” 

Not _could_ get messy. Standard’s wife doesn’t play, and she didn’t budge even when all three men tried to argue with her. You never know what someone will do, but Standard should have known this was exactly what she’d do. So thin and pale, with her sweet girl’s face and the same haircut she’s had since middle school. She held as still as Ray ever does while they hashed out the details and when she gave Shannon a hug for goodbye and good luck. But she wanted them all to sleep in the same bed, which they didn’t usually do for Benicio’s sake, and after he’d gone to school, Irene reached for them both, her whole body shaking with nerves. “Hold me,” she breathed, digging her nails into Ray’s back, Standard bracketing her from behind and rutting at the gap between their slippery thighs, their arms already tight around her and each other. A kiss to her jaw, another to her ear, and her panting high-pitched, like she was wounded, like she was bleeding out. Then she got up, got dressed, hefted the black bag with effort, said “Don’t follow me,” and left.

Ray stands up abruptly, ducks into his bedroom. Comes back with his crumpled, blood-spattered satin jacket nearly unrecognizable in his hands, a ball of ruined cloth. The blood dried to brown.

“She said she’d try to get the stains out, but I guess she forgot,” Ray says. “I forgot. It used to be for good luck. I’ll throw it out, it’s bad luck now.”

Standard stares at him from his place on the couch. “That’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard you make. ‘Cept maybe when you were laying out terms to Cook that day at the park.”

Ray doesn’t seem to know where to look, his expression so desperate Standard is halfway up, unsure if he’s about to offer a hug or himself to be punched, anything to get Ray to recover his customary unflappability, when a key scrapes in the lock and Irene walks in, her hair wind-tussled. 

“Hi,” she says.

They converge on her, nearly knock her over. Standard is deafened by his own heartbeat, or maybe by their two heartbeats, Ray’s arm crushing them, Irene’s hand on the back of Standard’s neck, fingernails digging in. Irene laughs but it comes out a little worn.

“It’s fine,” she says when she can breathe again and they let her sit on the couch. 

Standard pours her a glass of water, hears the door open and close again. By the time Irene’s drained the glass, Ray is back empty-handed, a look passing between him and Standard. Nothing they need to discuss with Irene right away. 

“It was fine,” she amends. “They counted the money, asked me who I was, how I knew Shannon. I said I’m no one, they’ll never hear about me again. Then they laughed at me, called me a little girl and sent me away. I changed three buses to make sure they weren’t following me, or I would’ve been here sooner.”

She’s between them on the couch and she takes both their hands, squeezes hard. “It’s fine. It’s done.” On the third try, she believes it herself. Standard holds on to her still, as does Ray.

“It got me thinking.” Her voice still a little shaky, her chest rising and falling as she lets go of the fear, the anticipation. Lets go of being prey. “We should buy a car. Something to get us to the beach, and I can get to work and you can give lessons to people who don’t have one.” She smiles at Ray.

“I don’t know anything about cars,” Standard says.

Irene turns to him with her smile of sunshine on the ocean. “Well, neither do I. I just know what I like.”

Standard kisses her knuckles. “Fucking philistines. You’ll have to pick something for us, man.”

On Irene’s other side, Ray lets himself smile too, still white-knuckling Irene’s hand. Fucking baby face. 

“Okay. I will,” Ray concurs.


End file.
